An Introduction to ISBN’s – excerpt

An Introduction to ISBN’s for Authors, by Taija Morgan

A brief introduction to ISBN’s as they pertain to self-publishing, including the relevance of your geographic location, what an ISBN is, how to determine whether you really need to get one or if you can just use a free one, and some notes on barcodes and selling your books in stores.

This is one of the most unnecessarily overcomplicated dig-yourself-in-a-hole-and-hide-from-the-world-forever topics that I had to deal with early on as an author myself—right up there with copyrights, don’t even get me started. ISBN’s were invented to drive new indie authors to insanity. Do you need to get them yourself or can you accept the free ones that come with so many ebook publishing platforms? There are just too many variables and it depends on what you’re trying to do and how you’re trying to do it.

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